Big Brother’ made his first appearance in George Orwell’s 1949 novel ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’. Orwell also wrote ‘Animal House’. Both are commonly required reading in high school and college classwork.

In Orwell’s book, Big Brother was the leader of Oceania where the dominant political party was all powerful and maintained iron fist rule over the citizenry ‘for their own sakes’. Citizens were watched constantly through television screens thus the birth of the phrase ’Big Brother is always watching’.